I can confidently say that this is my favorite of the Bloodlines series so far.

I would definitely say, though, that the first third or half of the book would have been much improved by shortening Adrian's chapters. I seriously considered skipping them. I was so anxious to get to Sydney, and Adrian was boring at best and annoying at worst. What was up with him? He was acting like Sydney was dead! I was really frustrated with him. How could he think that attempting to find her in a dream a couple of times a day was good enough? I would think checking hourly, with Sonya and Lissa taking a few shifts, would have been much more effective. He really would have had to get lucky for his method to have worked. Of course, ultimately, he did. But he could have made contact sooner.

Now, Sydney's chapters, I loved. I'm really interested in psychology and Sydney's "re-education" is very reminiscent of old-fashioned methods of treating mental disabilities. It was sufficiently creepy and infuriating, and I was cheering Sydney on the whole way. Although, there were a couple of times I got frustrated with her as well... The first time she thinks she'll be able to get drug-free sleep and realizes that they drug all of the inmates at night, my first thought was that she could try sleeping during their hour of reading time. Granted, maybe they're not allowed to and that time must be used for reading, but the fact that she didn't even think about it annoyed me. Later, I think it was when they were starting their attempt to get a Pavlovian response out of her and she took forever to figure out what they wanted her to say. She's been great at thinking like an Alchemist when she needs to up to and after this point, but for an inexplicable reason, her brain was working really slowly in that moment and it took some extreme pain for her to finally get those gears turning. It just seemed uncharacteristic to me.

Once Adrian got out of his slump, both sides kept me invested in the story and I loved the continuation and conclusion of it. I can't wait to read the next and final book!

Side note: I'm assuming Hopper will have something to do in the next book? Isn't he supposed to help or warn Sydney or something? I feel like he hasn't done anything but be adorable yet.